How to Use Competitor Keyword Analysis to Boost Your SEO

What are your competitors publishing on their website these days?

While focusing exclusively on your own web content might seem like the best way to stay relevant, there's a lot to be said for keeping tabs on the competition. A huge part of a robust marketing strategy is making sure you're covering all your bases. Sure, you can visit their site and take a peek at the UX design and get a general feel for their on-page SEO, but the most useful information comes from the keywords themselves. Let's take a look at all the ways you can use a competitor keyword analysis to gain a competitive edge for your content needs.

What is a competitor keyword analysis?

A competitor keyword analysis is a process of examining the keywords that your competitors are targeting in their online content and SEO strategies. The goal is to understand which search terms and long-tail keywords your competitors are using to attract visitors, rank in search engine results, and drive traffic to their websites. Also known as a "keyword gap analysis," this helps you identify opportunities and threats in your own SEO strategy. A competitor keyword analysis can lead to a boost in your SEO when you successfully identify high-value keywords that your competitors are ranking for, then target similar terms with your own optimized content.

How do I perform a competitor keyword analysis?

It's pretty straightforward — most of what you'll do in a competitor keyword analysis is the same as what you'd do in your own content analysis, with just a few more steps.

Identify competitors

Determine who your main competitors are in your industry or niche. These can be direct competitors (offering similar products or services) or indirect competitors (which offer different products or services but still compete for the attention and resources of the same target audience).

Use keyword research tools

Rellify, as well as tools from Semrush, Ahrefs, Moz and others, can help you gather data on the keywords your competitors are ranking for. Check for metrics like:

• Search volume. The number of searches for a particular keyword.
• Keyword difficulty. How competitive it is to rank for that keyword.
• Ranking position. What position their keywords are ranking for on SERPs.

Content analysis

Review the type of content your competitors are creating around these keywords. Are they blog posts, landing pages, or product descriptions? Evaluate how well their content aligns with the targeted keywords. Is there a more appropriate or effective way you could incorporate the keywords in your own content, providing a better user experience?

Opportunity identification

When you look at all facets of their content and keywords, search for opportunities to outperform them. Are there words with lower competition or a higher relevance to your audience? Take note of any gaps that you can fill.

Strategy adjustment

The overarching goal here is to boost your SEO and user experience with specific keyword opportunities you glean from insights. Based on your findings, take a step back and look at the bigger picture. Do you need to pivot your entire content strategy, or can you just make some tweaks? Adjust to capitalize on opportunities, address weaknesses, and set your brand apart.

After the competitor analysis, create your content

We've mentioned "filling in the gaps" in your competitions' content and using your insights for content optimization. But what exactly needs to happen with the insights you glean from your research?

Select target keywords

Choose keywords that are relevant to your audience and have a good balance of search volume and competition. Focus on those keywords where you can provide superior content compared to your competitors. Long-tail keywords (more specific phrases) are a good choice, because they typically have lower competition but high relevance. Here are the key factors to consider when selecting target keywords:

• Relevance. The keywords should be closely related to your products, services, or platform.
• User search intent. Target phrases with transactional intent first. These are the ones that will attract users who are further along in the buying cycle, increasing the likelihood of converting visits into sales or leads.
• Search volume. Higher search volume often means more potential traffic.
• Keyword difficulty. How competitive is it to rank for the keyword? Be realistic about the likelihood of your content outranking the competition with certain keywords, and how much effort you'll need to put forth to make that happen.

Create a content outline

Develop an outline for your content that will incorporate the chosen keywords naturally. Your content needs a clear structure, with headings that align with (and sometimes incorporate) your target keywords. Break down the main topic into subtopics that cover various aspects of the keyword. Use insights from competitor content to identify additional subtopics or related questions.

Rellify makes the creation of blog outlines seamless, with a drag and drop feature that allows you to integrate keywords wherever you think they'd best fit.

Develop high-quality content

Your content should be comprehensive and provide more value than competitor content. This is where you're going to use the information you gathered from the analytics on your competitor. Aim to cover the topic thoroughly, addressing common questions and providing actionable insights. High-quality content greatly benefits from a robust backlink profile, with lots of high-value, relevant sites linking back to your pages. This helps establish authority in your brand, one of the key metrics Google uses when ranking pages.

Also, don't forget to incorporate elements that boost user engagement, such as visuals (images, infographics), multimedia (videos, podcasts), and interactive elements (quizzes, tools).

Rellify is the platform many companies trust to develop content strategies, create content, and deliver measurable results. With a Relliverse™, you can have a customized AI subject-matter expert that shows your team exactly where you need to focus to get your content on page one of SERPs.

Optimize the on-page SEO elements

It's not enough to have all the right keywords in the body of your text. Optimization means strategically incorporating the keywords into every facet of the publication.

• Title tag and meta description. Craft a compelling title that includes the primary keyword. Make sure it is descriptive and within the recommended length (50-60 characters). The meta description should also include the target keyword and encourage clicks from curious readers. Aim for 150-160 characters.
• Headers and subheaders. Use your primary and secondary keywords in headers (H1, H2, H3) to structure the content and make it easier to scan.
• URL structure. Keep URLs short, use hyphens to separate words, and include target keywords. The URLs should be user-friendly and easy to understand.
• Alt text. Use descriptive and relevant keywords, avoid keyword stuffing, and make sure the text accurately represents the image content.
• Links. There are two different kinds, internal and external. With internal, you're linking to other relevant pages on your website to improve navigation and provide additional context. With external, you're citing authoritative sources and linking to high-quality external content to add credibility and provide further information.
• Page speed. This is how quickly the content on your webpage loads and becomes visible to users. It directly impacts both user experience and search engine rankings.  

Evaluate and adjust

Once you've published your optimized, relevant content made from expert research, keep an eye on how well it performs. Use tools like Google Analytics and Google Search Console to monitor the performance based on metrics like organic traffic, bounce rate, click-through rate (CTR) and keyword rankings. If you have a social media presence, promote your content with intriguing excerpts and insights, linking back to the content so users can click through.

Based on performance data, make adjustments to your content to improve its relevance and effectiveness toward conversion rates. Don't forget to update it regularly to keep it fresh and aligned with current trends.

Let Rellify help your brand knock out the competition

When it comes to leveraging content marketing insights from your top competitors, Rellify is the tool you need to make it happen. With Rellify, you can make data-driven strategic decisions based on a custom-AI subject-matter expert trained on your relevant focus topics. You can find out what topics and keywords are already ranking within your specific niche, so you can build a content strategy that'll drive organic traffic, get more clicks, and turn interested readers into valuable customers.

Want to really see what Rellify can do? Hop on a call with one of our experts to find out how Rellify can revolutionize your content process and results.

By Dan Duke — When you're building a content plan for digital marketing, you want to search high and low for the perfect topics and keywords that will resonate with your target audience. Fortunately, keyword extraction is a process that can help. In this article, we'll take a look at the operations behind this type of analysis, and how it's used in the context of content creation and, in particular, how it can be used with social media.

What is keyword extraction?

Keyword extraction is a form of data mining that involves identifying the most relevant words or phrases from user-generated content. In the context of social media, keyword extraction is performed on the content of platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and others. Once these words are identified, content analysis is performed to simplify, summarize, and classify the content.

Keyword extraction can involve supervised learning,  which requires labeled data to train models that can predict or classify keywords based on features extracted from the text. Conversely, it can involve unsupervised learning, in which no labeled data is required. Unsupervised learning methods rely on statistical and linguistic features to identify keywords based on their frequency and importance within the text.

Techniques and tools for keyword extraction

First comes a bit of data preprocessing. This is the preparation and cleaning of raw data to improve the quality and accuracy of the extraction process. We'll look at the processes first, and then the tools you can use to employ them.

Data preprocessing in keyword extraction from social media

Your first task is eliminating irrelevant characters, symbols, and formatting issues (e.g., HTML tags, special characters) from the text. All of the words should be in the correct case, too.

Now, you're ready for tokenization, where the text is broken into individual words or tokens. This helps when it comes to analyzing the frequency and importance of each term.  

Filter common words (e.g., "and," "the," "is") that don't carry significant meaning in the context of keyword extraction. These are known as "stop words" and can clutter the analysis.

Reduce words to their base or root form (e.g., "running" to "run") through stemming or lemmatization. This helps in treating different forms of a word as the same term, improving the accuracy of keyword extraction. Synonyms or variations of terms should be merged to ensure that different representations of the same concept are considered as a single keyword.

Exclude non-textual elements like images, videos, or other media types that do not contribute to the textual analysis. The data should be in a uniform format, which can be especially important for numerical data if it's involved in the text analysis.

Finally, segment long texts into meaningful units or chunks, which can help in more accurate keyword extraction by focusing on specific sections or themes.

NLP tools for running text analytics on social media text

Now you're ready to do some analysis. Natural language processing tools are crucial for analyzing and extracting insights from the vast and diverse texts generated on social media platforms. These are the tools you can use to efficiently process unstructured data. They employ tasks such as semantic analysis, noise reduction, trend detection, and keyword extraction, which are crucial for understanding user behavior and adjusting engagement strategies.

Statistical methods

• Term frequency-inverse document frequency (TF-IDF). Measures the importance of a term in a document relative to its frequency in the entire corpus.
• Frequency analysis. Counts occurrences of terms or phrases to determine their relevance.

Linguistic approaches

• Part-of-speech tagging. Identifies nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc., to extract meaningful words.
• Named entity recognition (NER). Detects names of people, places, organizations, and other specific entities.

Machine learning models

• Topic modeling. Uses algorithms to identify themes within the text, then clusters the data by main topics and subtopics.
• Deep learning. Employs neural networks to capture complex patterns and contextual information.

Some organizations combine statistical, linguistic, and machine learning approaches to improve accuracy. It all depends on your goals and bandwidth.

What are some challenges that come with keyword extraction from social media?

Keyword extraction from social media presents several distinct challenges that stem from the unique nature of social media content.

One major issue is the informal and varied language used, including slang, abbreviations, and unconventional grammar. This linguistic diversity can make it difficult to accurately identify and extract meaningful keywords. Just think of how quickly nonsensical catch-phrases and ear-worms enter and exit our online lexicon.

Social media texts are also pretty noisy, with a high volume of irrelevant, redundant, or off-topic content that can obscure valuable information. You'll often find bots or swarms of trolls that throw off the statistical significance of certain texts or phrases by spamming with (often inappropriate or nonsensical) posts.

Another challenge is the context sensitivity of keywords. Words and phrases can have different meanings depending on their context, complicating the task of extraction and requiring sophisticated algorithms to sort out through sentiment analysis. Furthermore, the rapid and dynamic nature of social media means that trends and topics can shift quickly, requiring keyword extraction systems to be both timely and adaptable.

The sheer volume of data generated on social media platforms also presents scalability issues, making it hard to process and analyze large datasets efficiently. Addressing these challenges requires a combination of advanced natural language processing techniques, machine learning models, and real-time processing capabilities.

Applications

Keyword extraction is an important step in lots of different processes, including:

Social media monitoring

Brands and organizations use keyword extraction to monitor mentions and conversations on social networks. By identifying trending topics and popular keywords, marketers can tailor their campaigns to align with current interests and preferences. This helps in creating more relevant and engaging advertisements.

Competitor analysis

By extracting keywords related to competitors, businesses can gain insights into their rivals’ strategies and performance, helping them to position themselves more effectively in the market. Rellify can provide expert competitive analyses. With a custom Relliverse™, we use deep machine learning to find topics and keywords that are already resonating with audiences in your specific industry or niche. That way, you can create the right content for the right people, bringing better results.  

Content curation

By relying on keyword extraction, and subsequent analysis of keywords related to user interests and interactions, you can build a content plan that's perfectly tailored to maximize your user engagement. Rellify can help with this, too. By providing data visualization, cluster analysis, and lots of other helpful AI-powered data analytics, you can find the right topics that will maximize your ROI.

Which NLP tools are best for social media text analysis?

Fortunately, there's no shortage of tools that can help with information extraction from social media. Check out the different features and interface with each solution, and find one that best matches your goals and preferences. Here are a few examples of popular tools.

• NLTK (Natural Language Toolkit). NLTK provides a comprehensive suite of text processing libraries and resources, including tokenization, stemming, lemmatization, and text classification. Its highly customizable and includes lots of different linguistic resources and tools for different text analysis tasks, making it suitable for in-depth analysis.
• BERT (Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers). BERT is a transformer-based model developed by Google that excels in understanding context and relationships in text. Its ability to capture nuanced meanings and context makes it highly effective for sentiment analysis, entity recognition, and understanding complex social media interactions.
• RapidMiner. RapidMiner is a data science platform that includes tools for text mining and sentiment analysis with a user-friendly interface. Its visual interface and integration capabilities make it accessible for non-programmers and useful for quickly building and deploying text analysis workflows.

How Rellify uses keyword extraction

Social media is just one way to find out what your target audience is talking about in their online communities. Search engines are another important focus, especially for B2B and B2C marketers.

At Rellify, we focus on SEO, using deep machine learning models to process large sets of data that are relevant to your industry or niche. Keyword extraction is just one piece of the puzzle, and the rest is a breeze with a custom Relliverse. If you're ready to experience 10x the returns on your SEO efforts with 10x less effort, contact an expert at Rellify today for a free demo.

Aug. 28 – Rellify Inc., the Virginia-based SaaS content marketing company, ranks third in the Best of Technology Award - an international competition - in the category AI Product Innovation. Rellify is considered the world's leading developer of enterprise AI-as-a-service software platforms that cover the entire end-to-end content development process.

Enterprise-specific vertical AI models

Rellify's flagship product, the Relliverse, uses company-specific vertical AI models to provide its users with unique insights into market-specific content trends and performance metrics. The platform enables companies to significantly accelerate the entire content development process, from ideation to publication - while ensuring that every piece of content is both relevant and engaging.

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Peter Kraus, CEO of Rellify, was delighted about the repeated award: “After taking first place in the Marketing & Sales category last year, third place in the AI Product Innovation category is a further confirmation of our work,” said Kraus. “Our team has worked hard to create a solution that enables marketers to use AI where it brings the greatest benefit - in content strategy and curation. This enables our customers to optimally serve the natural language needs of their target groups. The Relliverse helps companies to master the challenges of content creation precisely and efficiently and stands out from the competition through the insights gained and the high level of efficiency.”

Combination of advanced topic analysis and visual performance comparisons

The Relliverse combines in-depth topic analysis with user-friendly visual performance comparisons and allows users to filter and save views to optimize data analysis. This comprehensive approach improves content strategy and enables marketers to identify relevant topics in a targeted and efficient manner. In addition, the platform's robust article management offers seamless organization and filtering of content, further simplifying the creation and publishing process.
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Jürgen Kranz, CTO of Rellify, highlights the practical benefits of the platform: “The Relliverse was developed to solve three key problems that content marketing experts face today: First, it provides deep, customer-specific insights that cannot be covered by generic AI models such as ChatGPT. Second, these insights are immediately actionable, so that our clients can focus on the most relevant topics and keywords. And third, our AI-powered Relliverse ensures that content creation is both cost-effective and brand-true.”

Redefining the boundaries of digital content creation

Third place at the Best of Technology Award in the AI Product Innovation category underlines Rellify's commitment to redefining the boundaries of digital content creation. By focusing on delivering high-quality and relevant content, Relliverse helps content teams avoid information overload and misinformation, while fostering a more credible and trustworthy online ecosystem.

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Rellify's successes and ongoing innovations continue to have a significant impact on numerous industries. Rellify's solutions not only help companies create better content, but also ensure that it resonates with target audiences, ultimately increasing engagement and success in the digital world.

Best of Technology in Marketing and Sales

Rellify already won the Best of Technology Award from WirtschaftsWoche in the Marketing & Sales category in 2023. This year's award shows that Rellify continues to be a leader in innovation in content intelligence, offering its customers both high added value and maximum flexibility.

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For more information about Rellify and its cutting-edge solutions, visit rellify.com.

Contact: Rellify Inc.
Email: info@rellify.com
Phone: 628-228-6230
Website: www.rellify.com

By Jayne Schultheis — What's in a name? Well, for search engines, it's complicated. While we, as humans, have a naturally nuanced understanding of language, search engines need a little extra help sorting things out. Let's take a look at one example: the mechanics of named entity recognition. It's the mechanism used by search engines to determine what on earth we, as humans, are trying to say.

What is named entity recognition?

Named entity recognition (NER), sometimes called entity chunking or entity extraction, is a component of information retrieval in natural language processing (NLP). It involves identifying and classifying key parts of a text into predefined categories such as people, organizations, locations, dates, and other specific groups.

For example, in the sentence "NASA launched the Mars Rover on July 30, 2021, from Cape Canaveral," NER would identify:

• "NASA" as an organization
• "Mars Rover" as a specific project or mission name
• "July 30, 2021" as a date
• "Cape Canaveral" as a location

This type of recognition helps in categorizing and extracting relevant information from text for better analysis and understanding.

What is the role of NER in search engine algorithms?

Named entity recognition (NER) is crucial to search algorithms because it helps to improve the textual understanding of bots and the relevance of search results. When you consider the capabilities of AI in contrast to human understanding, it's easy to see how the ambiguity and nuances of language can make categorization difficult — and necessary. Look at this sentence:

China (group of athletes) won 48 gold medals at the 2008 Olympics in China (location).

NER enables computers to understand that the same word used twice in one sentence can have different meanings: a group of athletes who share a nationality and a geographic location.

If you went to Google and asked, "how many gold medals did China win at the 2008 Olympics?" Google wouldn't be scratching its head wondering how a location could win a medal in diving. Instead, NER allows the Google algorithms to know that you're asking about how many gold medals the athletes representing China won at the 2008 Olympics in China.

Now that you have an example, here’s how NER further contributes to search engine algorithms:

• Better natural language understanding. NER helps search engines identify and categorize key people, places, and organizations in web content. By recognizing these entities, search engines can better understand the context and subject matter of a page through deep learning, leading to more accurate indexing and retrieval.
• Improved query matching. When users enter search queries, NER helps search engines match those queries with relevant content by identifying and interpreting the named entities in both the query and the indexed pages. NER also helps search engines understand the context and user intent in which named entities are mentioned. This improves the ability to differentiate between entities with similar names. Another term for this is "semantic search."
• Rich snippets and structured data. Search engines use NER to improve the display of search results with rich snippets and structured data. By recognizing entities like products, events, and organizations, search engines can present additional details such as reviews, ratings, or event dates directly in the search results, adding value to the results.
• Content categorization. Search engines use NER to categorize content more effectively. By identifying and tagging entities, search engines can organize content into relevant categories and topics, which helps improve content recommendations and personalization.
• Text summarization. NER enables text summarization to focus on the most important entities and interactions so it can capture the core factual content of the text, rather than just the keywords. NLP tools like GPT and Google's Gemini use this method of text processing.

How does NER work?

We're so glad you asked. Here's a step-by-step explanation.

1. The process begins with preprocessing, where the text is cleaned and prepared for analysis. This involves removing unnecessary characters, correcting typos, and sometimes normalizing text.
2. Next, the text is tokenized, meaning it is broken down into smaller units like words or phrases. Tokenization helps analyze the structure and meaning of the text more effectively. In the sentence,  "John Lennon co-founded the Beatles," it would be split into tokens, "John," "Lennon," "co-founded" and "Beatles."
3. Next, the NER system applies feature extraction. This step involves identifying and creating features or characteristics of the text that might be relevant for recognizing named entities. Features can include part-of-speech tags, word shapes, or even surrounding context. In this case, it would be the capital 'L' in Lennon and 'B' in Beatles, which indicates that these are proper nouns.
4. Now, we're at the core of NER: entity classification. At this stage, the system uses pre-trained models, which may be based on machine learning algorithms or deep learning networks, to classify each token or sequence of tokens into predefined categories like "Person," "Organization," or "Location." In this case, "John Lennon" would be classified as "person" and the Beatles, an "organization."
5. Once the entities are classified, the system proceeds to post-processing. This step involves refining and validating the results to ensure accuracy. It may include resolving ambiguities, such as distinguishing between a person's name and a common noun. This kind of quality control prevents "Beatles" from being classified as group of insects instead of talented rock stars.
6. Finally, the system outputs the recognized entities along with their categories, making it easier for users to extract meaningful information from the text. Thanks to NER, you'll receive a wealth of information from a search engine about a group of talented young men from Liverpool who formed one of the most popular bands of all time.

How can I use NER to improve my SEO?

Understanding NER gives you a better grasp of how search engines assess your content and generate SERPs. Your best option is leveraging the insights gained from NER to improve content relevance and quality, creating a better user experience on your website. Here are some more specific strategies to help you incorporate NER into your content strategy and SEO efforts:

• Optimize for specific entities.  Do some content marketing research. Are there specific companies, products, or locations that are big players in your industry? Make sure that your content includes these entities naturally in the text.
• Create targeted content. Create content around topics that are already doing well in your industry. This should help you align your content with what users and search engines find valuable. Rellify is the expert in content optimization, using deep machine learning to cluster topics and develop keywords that will naturally rank well on SERPs.
• Improve your technical SEO. Include relevant entities in your metadata (title tags, meta descriptions, and headers). This can improve the relevance of your pages for specific queries related to those entities. You should also implement structured data (schema markup) for entities identified through NER.
• Internal linking. Identify important entities in your content and use them to create internal links to related pages on your site. This helps search engines understand the context and relationships between your pages, improving your site's SEO.
• Voice search optimization. Voice search often involves questions about specific entities. Use NER to identify common entities and incorporate them into content designed to answer voice search queries. This improves your chances of being featured in voice search results.

Let Rellify use NER to boost your returns

Rellify is no stranger to the value of NER and natural language processing. We strategically use it in the context of deep learning to better understand your brand and your audience. If you're ready for a content revamp, or looking for ways to boost your digital marketing returns, a custom Relliverse™ from Rellify is the way to go. With a Relliverse™, you can use artificial intelligence with deep machine learning to cluster topics, find keywords, and build content that's relevant and naturally ranks well on search engine results pages. Ready to find out more? Schedule a brief demo with one of our experts today!

Level up your marketing with an AI-supported content strategy platform. Creating content that resonates with your audience is both an art and a science—but even the best marketers need the right tools. That’s where the Rellify Relliverse™ comes in, helping you focus your content efforts with precision.

More than just a tool, the Relliverse™ is your strategic companion, uncovering hidden opportunities and helping you avoid common pitfalls. If you’ve ever wondered which topics truly matter to your audience or where your content is hitting or missing the mark, you’re in the right place. This platform provides the insights you need to refine your strategy and drive real results.

Overview: What’s in it?

When you log into the Relliverse™, you’ll land on a dashboard designed to streamline your content strategy. The home screen provides a high-level view of your project, key tools, and helpful tips to get started.

This guide will focus on four critical areas that will help you create data-driven, audience-focused content:

• Project Brief – Outlines your content plan, including project timeline, competitor domains, focus topics, audience specifications, and visual preferences. It ensures alignment by defining tone, expertise level, and automatic settings for future briefs.
• Competitors – See how your content stacks up against competitors. This area displays your domain alongside selected competitor domains, with four key graphs offering a quick view of critical KPIs.
• Topics – Explore the focus topics that shape your Relliverse™, including their relevance, search volume, difficulty, and related subtopics. This section helps you identify content opportunities and audience interests.
• Content Insights – Review all the topics you’ve saved during your analysis and explore AI-driven article suggestions tailored to your strategy.

Each of these areas plays a vital role in refining your content approach, ensuring it resonates with your audience and outperforms competitors.

Let’s dive deeper.

Competitors: Track Your Market Position at a Glance

The Competitors section gives you a clear view of how your company compares to key players in your industry. This interactive dashboard helps you analyze competitor performance and refine your strategy.

How to Use This Section

• Table Overview: See competitor rankings, article counts, search term performance, and estimated traffic.
• Interactive Graphs: Hover over a competitor in the table to highlight their data in the charts, and vice versa.
• Click for Details: Underlined numbers open pop-ups with in-depth insights, including article titles, rankings, and traffic estimates.
• Sorting & Filtering: Organize data by priority (1-5 stars) and focus on competitors that matter most.

Key Metrics Analyzed

• Published Articles: Total number of indexed articles.
• Articles in Top 20: How many rank in the top 20 search results.
• Average Ranking: The typical position across all ranked articles.
• Estimated Traffic: Projected visits based on search rankings.
• Traffic Distribution: Share of traffic compared to competitors.
• Search Terms in Top 20: Keywords contributing to high rankings.

Why It Matters

Identify which competitors are leading and why. See if volume correlates with rankings and traffic. Learn from competitors with fewer search terms but higher traffic. Adjust your strategy to improve content impact.

Take control of your competitive landscape—analyze, prioritize, and outperform!

Topics: Build a Data-Driven Content Strategy

The Topics section helps you identify and prioritize content topics based on relevance, search demand, and competitive difficulty. Use this interactive tool to refine your strategy and focus on high-impact topics.

How to Use This Section

• Explore Your Topics: Topics are clustered into main topics and subtopics, up to four levels deep. Click the small arrow next to a topic to expand the cluster and explore related subtopics.
• Sort & Filter Data: Customize your view using filters like relevance, search volume, competition level, and traffic insights.

Key Metrics Explained

• Search Volume: Displays the average monthly search traffic for a topic, including subtopic breakdowns.
• Traffic & Market Share: See estimated traffic for each topic and how much of that traffic your site captures compared to competitors.
• Competitor Insights: View competing articles, search terms, rankings, and gaps in your content strategy.

Filter & Save Custom Views

Customize your topic list by applying filters like:

• Relevance Score
• Search Volume
• Competition Level
• Articles Published
• Rankings & Traffic Share

Save your filtered views for quick access later.

Explore Key Sections

• My Coverage – See topics where you’ve already published content.
• Strengths – See topics where you rank best.
• Opportunities – Topics that are the quickest way for you to land on page one of search results.
• Gaps – Find opportunities where competitors rank but you don’t.
• All – View all identified topics, structured by relevance.
• Planned – Bookmark important topics for future reference.

Content Insights: your saved topics and article recommendations

The Content Insights section helps you manage and explore your saved topics and their associated article recommendations. This area provides a structured way to analyze content opportunities, optimize existing content, and track published articles.

Navigating Content Insights

• Topics Panel (Left Side):
  • Displays all saved topics from your analysis.
  • You can filter to view all topics or select an individual topic to see specific article suggestions.
• Article Suggestions Panel (Right Side):
  • Shows relevant article recommendations based on your saved topics.
  • Articles can be sorted by different criteria for easier review.

Content Tabs

The article suggestions are categorized into different tabs:

• New Content Suggestions – New article suggestions for your saved topics.
• Content to Optimize – Topics identified via the Relliverse™ with already created articles.
• All Domain Content – Published articles originating from the Relliverse™, along with their Pre-Score for SEO and readability

Features and Actions

• Filtering & Prioritization: Use filters, prioritization settings, and search functions to refine suggestions.
• Article Creation:
  • Click + Create next to an article suggestion to start a new article.
  • Select multiple articles using checkboxes to batch-create or generate content.
• Pre-Score Analysis: For online articles, the Pre-Score provides an initial SEO and readability assessment, helping you identify areas for improvement.

Content Hub

You’re ready to create your first articles? Let’s go!

What are you waiting for? Check your Relliverse™, discover topics relevant to your business and your target groups and cover them in articles that people enjoy reading.

By Jayne Schultheis — The ethics of white hat/black hat SEO are worth exploring as search engines continuously assess the efforts of content creators who try to "cut through the red tape" of optimization. The ethics of SEO are complicated, but important to keep in mind as you build your content marketing strategy. Let's look at both ethical and unethical SEO techniques, and the types of returns you can expect from each.

What are white hat SEO techniques?

White hat techniques refer to legitimate and ethical SEO strategies used to improve a website’s search engine ranking.

Examples of white hat techniques

These techniques are in line with the guidelines set by search engines like Google, aiming for sustainable and long-term success.

• Quality content creation. Develop high-quality, relevant, and valuable content that addresses the needs and interests of your target audience. This includes well-researched articles, engaging blog posts, and informative videos.
• Keyword research and optimization. Identify relevant keywords and incorporate them naturally into your content, titles, headings, and meta descriptions to improve visibility in search results. This is one of Rellify's secret weapons. With AI-driven tools, Rellify is able to find unique topics and keywords within your particular niche that will naturally rank well in search engines.
• On-page SEO. Optimize individual web pages to rank higher and earn more relevant traffic. This includes proper use of HTML tags (like title tags and meta descriptions), optimizing images with alt text, improving page load speed, and implementing a mobile-friendly design.
• Technical SEO. Does the website meet technical requirements for search engines? This involves improving site architecture, optimizing XML sitemaps, fixing broken links, and maintaining proper use of redirects.
• Earn quality backlinks. Earn links from reputable and relevant websites through outreach, guest posting, and creating valuable content that naturally lends itself to link-building.
• User experience (UX) optimization. Improve the overall user experience on your website by making sure it's easy to navigate, visually appealing, and provides clear calls to action. A good UX can reduce bounce rates and increase engagement.
• Local SEO. Claim and optimize your Google My Business listing. Encourage local reviews and make sure that your NAP (Name, Address, Phone Number) information is consistent across all local directories.
• Social media engagement. An active social media presence can help drive traffic to your website, engage with your audience, and build brand awareness. While social signals themselves may not directly impact SEO, social media can still help increase visibility as another form of online presence.

What are black hat SEO techniques?

Black hat techniques in SEO are unethical and manipulative strategies used to artificially boost a website’s search engine ranking.

Examples of black hat SEO

These methods violate search engine guidelines and can lead to severe SEO risks and penalties, including de-indexing, lowered search visibility, loss of organic traffic, or a ban from search engine results.

• Keyword stuffing. This is overloading a web page with keywords or phrases in an unnatural way to try and manipulate search rankings. It  often results in awkward, unreadable content.
• Cloaking. You present different content to search engines than what you're presenting to users. This may be done to deceive the search engine into ranking the page higher.
• Invisible text and links. Some sneaky web designers set the text to match the background color or use very small font sizes. Users can't read it, but search engines can. This is usually done to include more keywords or backlinks without them being visible to users.
• Link farms. Link farming is the process of creating or participating in networks of low-quality websites that link to each other to artificially inflate the number of backlinks to a site. These links are not earned naturally and are often irrelevant.
• Paid links. When you buy or sell links with the intent of manipulating search engine rankings, search engines like Google view it as a violation of their guidelines.
• Content scraping. This is the practice of copying content from other websites and republishing it as your own. This can lead to duplicate content issues and is considered theft of intellectual property. With the proliferation of AI-generated content, this is a practice that's rampant, as most generative AI is produced from content scraped from other websites. This is why fact-checking and humanizing any AI-generated text is so important to your brand credibility.
• Doorway pages. This is when you create multiple pages optimized for specific keywords that lead to a single destination, providing a poor user experience.
• Negative SEO. Some websites try to harm a competitor's site by building spammy backlinks to it or employing other tactics to get it penalized by search engines. Don't do it — you're better than that!
• Entirely AI-generated content. When you use software like OpenAI to create large volumes of low-quality content quickly, you're signaling to both readers and search engines that you're not actually an expert in your field. Experts write content that's unique.

What to do if you've been penalized for using "Black hat techniques"

Noticeable drops in organic traffic or search engine rankings can indicate that you have been penalized. Check Google Search Console for any notifications that indicate a manual action or penalty. Google often provides specific details about the type of penalty and the reasons behind it.

Conduct a website audit and look for the types of "black hat" issues and strategies we mentioned earlier.

Address the issues

If you have acquired unnatural or spammy backlinks, use the Google Disavow Tool to indicate which links should not be considered. Reach out to webmasters to request removal of harmful links if possible. Correct or remove any hidden text, doorway pages, or other deceptive practices.

Update your content strategy

Shift to creating high-quality, valuable, and original content that adheres to SEO best practices. Work toward ethical SEO that follows search engine guidelines such as proper keyword usage, on-page optimization, and quality link-building. Focus on user experience, too, including site usability, load speed, mobile responsiveness.

The sooner you change course, the better your chances of avoiding reputation damage. Playing by the rules may be time-consuming and slow to show results, but it’s still your best bet in building an authoritative and enduring web presence. 

Submit a reconsideration request

If you’ve received a manual penalty, prepare a reconsideration request through Google Search Console. In your request, detail the issues, provide evidence of the steps you've taken to rectify the issues, and show a genuine commitment to adhering to SEO compliance and best practices going forward. Don't worry — it's not the end of the world. Recovery from penalties might take some time, and maybe a few algorithm updates, but you'll most likely bounce back from any algorithmic penalty or traffic loss.

Let Rellify help get your SEO on track

Avoiding black hat techniques and focusing on long-term SEO strategy centered on authoritative content is your best bet for boosting organic growth. At Rellify, we're committed to white hat SEO. We help our clients create relevant, optimized, and well-researched content that naturally ranks well on search engines. And with a state-of-the-art Relliverse,™ you can leverage custom AI to find the right topics, use the right keywords, and answer the right questions. Ready to find out more? Schedule a quick demo with one of our experts today.

In today's fast-moving digital age of content marketing, first impressions are crucial. Blog headlines are the first exposure a potential customer might have with your brand. They must capture the attention of readers and entice them to click through and engage with the content.

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If you're looking to boost your online presence and drive more traffic to your website or publication, mastering the art of writing catchy and engaging headlines is a critical skill. Let's dive into the world of SEO friendly headlines, and go over some tips for crafting headlines that captivate readers.

The role of headlines in SEO content strategy

"Headline" is a print media term that has been adapted for the online world. In the SEO field, headlines are referred to as titles and they take two forms— meta titles and on-page titles. When you look a search results page and see hyperlinked text that describes a blog post or landing page, that's a meta title. The on-page title, sometimes referred to as the H1, is the large text at the top of an article or landing page.

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They frequently are the same, but writers and editors can make subtle changes between the two to maximize their value. The meta title must appeal to search engines and readers alike, but H1s are focued on readers. In this article, we'll use the term "headline" to apply to both meta titles and H1s unless we state otherwise.

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Headlines act as the initial gateway and subheadings are the roadmap for both search engines and users. They convey the main topic of the content, which helps search engines understand and index the page appropriately. Search engines like Google use algorithms that consider the relevance and clarity of headlines when ranking pages, making headline optimization a key aspect of any SEO strategy.

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By incorporating the focus keyword and relevant keywords naturally within the headline, website owners can improve the page’s visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs). This increased visibility drives organic traffic, as users are more likely to click on results that appear at the top of the SERPs.

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Beyond their technical importance, headlines significantly impact user engagement. On SERPs, a great headline will make searchers click and become visitors to your site. Once inside, compelling and informative headlines, and subheadings,  can provide valuable information to readers who are scanning, but at the same time encourage them to slow down and read more.

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Don't forget, your web pages are probably peppered with headlines for other blog articles and pages, with links to each one. So a great headline, or a bad one, will be making impressions all over your site, not just on one article.  

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Great headlines improve the "stickiness" or your page and entire site. It makes it more likely that readers will click through to the other content, increase page views, and reduce bounce rates.

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Well-crafted headlines can also boost social media shares, as users are more likely to share content with attractive headlines that are clear, intriguing, and relevant.

Key elements of SEO friendly headlines

To write SEO friendly headlines that drive traffic and clicks, you should keep a few things in mind.

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Start by researching and understand the target audience for the content topic. Who needs this information? Is the reader's intent to learn or to buy? The answers to these questions will help shape your process. The headline should be relevant to both the topic and the audience, capturing their attention and piquing their interest.

Keyword integration

The headline should include the main keyword or key phrase that accurately represents the content. Most of the content on your website (besides pillar pages) should be focused on long-tail keywords. These are more specific, longer phrases that are highly relevant to your content, tend to have lower competition, and can attract more targeted traffic. Using other topic-related keywords in subheadings and throughout the content further optimizes the article for search engines.

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If you're wondering which keywords to use in headlines, the content creation experts at Rellify can help. With a custom Relliverse, you can make data-driven strategic decisions based on a custom-AI subject-matter expert trained on data related to your business. With these insights, you can discern which keywords to incorporate into headlines and build your content around — so you can get better results.

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Finally, use the focus keyword at the beginning of the headline to boost search results.

Optimized structure and length

When it comes to headline length, it is important to find a balance between being descriptive and concise. Search engines typically display only a certain number of characters in the search results, so the most important information should be within that limit. A concise headline that accurately reflects the content can attract more clicks and improve the overall SEO of the article. If you're not sure whether your headline is following SEO best practices, you can always check with headline analyzer tools like this one offered by CoSchedule. Rellify automatically analyzes headlines, tells you if they are too long and gives other SEO-friendly tips for improving them.

Headline strategies

Question headlines can act as helpful tools. If users type that specific question into Google and your website is considered an authority on the topic, it'll encourage search engines to suggest your content as the answer to those queries.

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Readers also find numbers to be compelling. Instead of writing: "How to Write Great Headlines" try "12 Ways to Make Headlines Shine."

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Finally, active voice beats passive voice and powerful verbs motivate readers.

The URL connection

The headline of a blog post and its URL have a natural connection related to search engine optimization (SEO). Ideally, the URL should include the focus keyword, which reflects the content of the blog post. This makes it easier for users to understand what the page is about just by looking at the URL. This can help search engines understand the relevance of the content and improve the chances of a higher Google ranking. Since headlines also benefit from using the focus keyword, they will resemble the URL. In terms of SEO, keep URLs concise and descriptive, with a maximum of 50 to 60 characters, so they're easily readable and shareable.

Avoid clickbait — focus on relevancy and clarity

It might be tempting to use clickbait, but it's a cheap trick that lacks sustainability. Clickbait headlines use sensational, false or ambiguous words and phrases that may initially attract clicks. In the end, they can damage the credibility and reputation of the website or publication. If a reader feels misled or disappointed by your content, they are likely to avoid your website altogether. They also are much less likely to become customers.

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Let your content do the talking. Write valuable, relevant content and headlines that accurately represent it. This creates a positive user experience, builds trust with readers, and encourages them to engage further with the content.

Can AI help me write SEO friendly headlines?

Well, yes and no. Generative AI is a helpful and effective tool for brainstorming headlines, especially when you have writer's block. These kinds of tools can be helpful for suggesting power words, too. However, most AI is not yet capable of optimizing headlines for SEO. You'll find headlines developed by generic AI are often too long and seemingly use headline formulas.

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"Number or Trigger Word + Adjective + Keyword + Promise/Benefit"  is one of the most common formulas you'll see when using generic AI tools.

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We're not saying AI isn't useful in this area — it certainly is. That's why Rellify offers generative AI in our platform. When you highlight a text and hit "suggest headline," you'll be provided with a catchy, compelling headline that you can customize as needed.

The art of writing catchy headlines

One could say it's both an art and a science, just like all content optimization.

Inspiration and creativity in headline writing

Have you researched the latest SEO trends in headlines? Another way to find inspiration is by researching successful headlines within your industry or niches. Analyzing what makes those headlines effective can provide insights and ideas for creating unique and compelling headlines. Additionally, brainstorming sessions and collaborating with other creative individuals can help generate innovative ideas for headline writing.

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Clever and engaging headlines require a combination of creativity and strategy. Clever ones often use wordplay, humor, or unexpected twists to capture the reader's attention. Engaging headlines, on the other hand, appeal to the reader's emotional triggers or offer valuable information. You might even be able to incorporate both if you're a pro!

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Here, the difference between meta titles and H1s come into play. Cleverness and wordplay work best in H1s, where they can delight readers. For meta titles, which are being assessed by bots, straighter is better.

Capitalization and grammar rules for headlines

When it comes to capitalization and grammar rules for headlines, consistency is key. Be sure to follow the established style guide of the publication or website. There are two common styles.

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Sentence case capitalizes the first word and proper nouns.

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Title case capitalizes all major words and puts minor words, like "the" "and" and "but" in lower case.

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Within those types, there are differences in style, so know the style for your site and be consistent.

Analyzing the success of SEO headlines in driving traffic

By monitoring the click-through rates and traffic generated by different headlines, content creators can gain insights into what works and what doesn't. Google Analytics is a great place to start for comparative research and A/B testing headlines. This data can then be used to optimize future headlines and improve the overall performance of the website or publication. When you're updating evergreen content, analyze and adapt SEO headlines to make sure they are effectively driving traffic and meeting the needs of the target audience.

Let Rellify help you create SEO friendly headlines

Your SEO strategy needs content with strong, compelling, optimized headlines. Fortunately, Rellify makes the process of writing them simple and effective. It all starts with topic research — enhanced by deep machine learning and customized AI that finds topics within your niche that are already poised to do well on search engines. Once you have the right focus keywords, you'll be ready to create stellar content framed by SEO-optimized headlines. Ready to improve your digital marketing? Book a quick demo with one of our Rellify experts to find out exactly how Rellify can revolutionize your content processes.

Virginia Beach, VA, 07/17/24 – The German-American startup Rellify has been nominated by WirtschaftsWoche, Germany's leading business magazine, as a finalist for the Best of Technology Award. Rellify is the leading developer of Enterprise AI-as-a-Service software platforms for end-to-end content development.

Enterprise-specific vertical AI models

Rellify’s flagship innovation, the Relliverse, integrates enterprise-specific vertical AI models to give users unparalleled insights into market-specific content trends and performance metrics. With the Rellify platform, businesses can streamline their content development in an end-to-end process, from ideation to publishing, to make sure every piece of content is both relevant and impactful.

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Peter Kraus, CEO of Rellify, was delighted with the nomination. “Being nominated again by WirtschaftsWoche in an international competition is a great honor for us,” Kraus said. “Our team has worked tirelessly to develop a solution for marketers to leverage AI where it counts the most – for content strategy and curation – so their brands best answer the natural language queries of their target audience. The Relliverse empowers organizations to navigate the complexities of content publishing with precision and confidence, offering a level of insight and efficiency that sets us apart from the competition.”

Combination of advanced topic analysis and intuitive visual performance comparisons

The Relliverse combines advanced topic analysis with intuitive visual performance comparisons, allowing users to filter and save views for more effective data analysis. This comprehensive approach enhances content strategy, enabling marketers to identify and target high-value topics with ease. Additionally, the platform’s robust article management capabilities facilitate seamless organization and filtering of content, further optimizing the creation and publication process.

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Rellify’s CTO, Jürgen Kranz, highlighted the practical benefits of the platform. “The Relliverse is designed to address three core challenges faced by content marketers today. First, it provides deep, customer-specific insights that are unmatched by generic AI models. Second, it makes these insights actionable, allowing our clients to focus on the most relevant topics and keywords. Finally, our AI-powered Relliverse ensures that content creation is both cost-effective and true to the brand’s voice.”

Pushing the boundaries of digital content creation

Being a finalist in the Best of Technology Award again reflects Rellify’s dedication to pushing the boundaries of digital content creation. By focusing on the delivery of high-quality, relevant content, the Relliverse supports content teams by reducing information overload and misinformation. At the same time, it contributes to a more credible and reliable online ecosystem.

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Rellify’s achievements and ongoing innovations continue to make a significant impact across various industries. Their solutions not only help businesses produce better content but also ensure that it resonates with their target audiences, ultimately driving engagement and success in the digital landscape.

Best of Technology in Marketing and Sales

Rellify already won the Best of Technology Award in the category Marketing and Sales in 2023.

According to the jury, which included members of leading educational and research institutions, Rellify’s Content Intelligence platform offers the highest level of innovation, the best value and the most flexibility for the future.

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For more information about Rellify and its cutting-edge solutions, visit rellify.com.

Contact: Rellify Inc.
Email: info@rellify.com
Phone: 628-228-6230
Website: www.rellify.com

By Jayne Schultheis — When building your website, or maybe conducting a content audit, you want to make sure the site is well-structured and optimized for both search engines and customers. To accomplish that, it helps to have thoughtfully-crafted pillar pages.

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A pillar page is a comprehensive web page, typically an article or blog post, that covers a specific topic in a way that supports the infrastructure of a website and its content strategy. In the context of SEO, a pillar page covers many aspects of a topic and includes internal links to other pages on the site that cover those subtopics. Together, the pillar page and related pages form a topic cluster.

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How does a pillar page help your SEO strategy?

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This structure enhances the site's authority and helps improve its search engine ranking by:

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• Providing a central hub. The pillar page acts as the central hub for a topic, giving an overview and linking to detailed articles, or blog posts, that explore subtopics with greater depth. The pillar page is positioned at the core of a topic cluster, providing a means to explore the topic further.
• Improving user experience. By organizing content around pillar pages and clusters, users can easily navigate and find information. This increases the time users spend on the site and reduces bounce rates.
• Enhancing internal linking. Pillar pages create a strong internal linking structure, making it easier for search engines to crawl and index the site, thus boosting SEO.
• Establishing authority. A well-structured pillar page positions the site as an authority on a topic, increasing the likelihood of earning backlinks and improving the site's overall search engine ranking. Authority is one of the top qualities search engines look for when deciding who gets the top ranking in certain user searches.

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What's the difference between a pillar page and cornerstone content?

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If you look up the word "pillar" in the dictionary, you'll find that it's described as an upright, supporting post in a building. If you look up "cornerstone," you'll find that it refers to the foundational blocks of buildings. So, both of these types of content have their linguistic roots in "supporting structures," even though their method of support is different.

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While some people use these SEO terms interchangeably, they have different meanings and uses for SEO and content strategy. Cornerstone content is central to the core of a website's purpose. A pillar is the center of a cluster of topics. Your cornerstone content could link to several pillar pages, which could then link to pages that focus on subtopics. Here are some other ways to look at it.

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• Scope. Pillar content covers a broad topic and links to more detailed articles, while cornerstone content represents the best, most important articles on a site.
• Focus. Pillar content is focused on creating a comprehensive, anchoring resource and strong internal linking structure. Cornerstone content is designed to be the authoritative, go-to resource on its subject and feature internal and external linking.
• Strategy. Pillar content supports a content clustering strategy, boosting topic authority and enhancing user navigation. Cornerstone content supports an overall SEO strategy by presenting relevant, evergreen articles that define the site's expertise and authority.

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In short, cornerstone pages can act as pillar pages, but pillar pages are not cornerstone pages.

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What's a good example of a pillar page?

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Let's do a bit of content analysis by looking at the pillar page of a popular project management tool — Trello.

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This page is called "How to Embrace Remote Work" and functions as a "complete guide to setting up your team for remote work success."

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As you scroll, you see five sections related to remote work. Each provides a concise take on its subject and provides a link to take visitors to a deeper article on that sub-topic.

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On the left, notice the interactive table of contents that allows readers to click and jump to a certain part of this pillar landing page.

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As a project management tool and subscription service, Trello is strategically positioning itself to be an expert on remote work, especially when it comes to virtual project collaboration between team members.

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Pillar pages can function as guides along the customer journey. Think of them as vital middlemen between your main landing page and the page to the product, service, or information that turns your target audience into customers.

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How can I create a pillar page?

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We won't get into the nitty gritty of website construction here. Wordpress and other web content publishing platforms have made that much simpler these days. However, if you're brainstorming what to include on your pillar pages, here are some key elements you should consider:

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• Keyword research. A pillar page's short-tail focus keyword helps keep the topic broad and allows you to branch out with your linked cluster content. Those linked, cluster pages are likely to have long-tail keywords.
• Table of contents. Your pillar page should be on the longer side, since it's a comprehensive overview of a topic. A TOC helps users quickly scan the page to find what they need.
• Internal links. We covered this above, but this is the main reason you're making a pillar page — to provide a launching pad for visitors looking for more in-depth content.
• Regular updates. Keep an eye on the page's analytics and engagement metrics. Update the page as necessary, especially if you add more content on the subject that you can link to. Content optimization is an ongoing task.
• Visual and interactive elements. Do you have user-generated content that helps represent your product or service? Charts that show informative and related statistics? Photographs and videos that engage readers? These embellishments strengthen a pillar page and help it fulfill its purpose.

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This list certainly isn't exhaustive, but it gives you some good starting points. No two pillar pages will look the same. Yours will reflect your particular brand, target customers, products or services, and content goals.

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Let Rellify help you craft pillar pages that will exceed your content goals

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At Rellify, we're in the business of helping people craft content that gets results. We know that great pillar pages are foundational to a robust SEO strategy. With a Relliverse™, a custom-AI subject-matter expert trained on your relevant focus topics, you can make data-driven strategic decisions on that strategy. Your pillar pages will be more likely to foster lead generation and higher conversion rates. Want to find out more? Talk to one of our Rellify experts and schedule a demo today.

By Jayne Schultheis — If you've noticed that your Google search results have looked a bit different recently, you're not going crazy! For select inquiries, Google has implemented an SGE (search generative experience) that provides an AI Overview at the top of search results to answer questions. This has sent shockwaves through the content marketing business. Marketers go to great lengths to produce content that will rank at the top of organic search results and will be used for featured snippets. Now, Google's AI is providing direct answers to even complex questions so users won't have to click on organic results.

In this article, we'll take a close look at Google's new AI-generated responses and the implications for those creating SEO-optimized, long-form content as a part of their marketing strategy.

What is the Google AI Overview feature?

Well, let's start with Google Gemini, which has many different elements and is the key to generating AI Overviews. Gemini is an advanced AI project developed by Google DeepMind, the company's artificial intelligence research lab. Google Gemini includes several generative AI models to challenge ChatGPT and other players in that field. These models can analyze and generate content using not only text, but also images, audio, and video. This allows Gemini to perform complex tasks that involve interpreting and creating diverse forms of information.

For AI Overviews, Gemini can process complex, multi-part queries and help formulate plans for things like a vacation or weekly meals.

At Google I/O 2024 in May, the search engine giant highlighted many uses for Gemini, including AI Overviews and ways to extend its functions. That conference, and future events, will continue to reveal search enhancements powered by AI that will challenge search optimization marketing to evolve.

One example is Google's new "circle to search" visual search integration feature, available on certain Android phones. This AI-powered search feature allows users to draw a circle around an object within an image to initiate a search based on that specific object — all made possible by Gemini.

What makes the Google AI Overview different from regular snippets?

Google snippets have been a treasured target for digital content marketing for a long time, especially for long-form content. Here are some ways that AI Overviews improve on the "snippet" model:

• Summarization. It condenses long articles, reports, and other sources into brief summaries, making it easier for users to grasp the main points quickly.
• Contextual understanding. The AI can understand complex queries and the context of the information using natural language processing. This makes the summaries accurate and relevant.
• Source diversity. It pulls information from a wide range of sources, providing a well-rounded view of the topic.
• Interactive elements. Users can often interact with the summaries, such as clicking on them to view more detailed information or related topics.
• Real-time updates. The feature can update summaries in real-time as new information becomes available, giving users access to the latest insights.
• Personalization. It can tailor the information based on the user's interests and past interactions, providing a more personalized experience.

Rellify is helping to lead the way in search innovation by using AI to help you research and craft content that naturally ranks well on search engines. Generic AI adoption isn't good enough. You need AI-driven insights from personalized tech that understands your niche, audience, and brand. That's why Rellify provides Relliverses™ for customers, which use AI to provide topic and keyword insights based on what's already ranking well in your business sector.

How do I activate Google AI on Google Search?

Google AI is typically enabled by default for eligible searches. When you search on a topic that Google thinks is appropriate for an AI-generated summary, it will appear at or near the top of the search results.

Which queries activate AI summaries?

• Broad or exploratory queries. Questions that are general or exploratory in nature, requiring multi-step reasoning such as "Can dehydration cause high blood pressure and what should I do about it?"
• Comparative queries. Searches that involve comparing different options, like "best greenhouses under $500" or "pros and cons of electric cars."
• Explanatory queries. Queries that seek detailed explanations or overviews, such as "How do magnets work?" or "What are the steps in the scientific method?"
• Current events and trending topics. Searches related to recent news or trending topics where an up-to-date synthesis of information is helpful.
• How-to queries. Questions that involve step-by-step instructions or guidance, like "How to start a vegetable garden" or "How to bake a cake."

What are the implications of Google AI Overviews for content marketers?

If you've spent all your energy on SEO, only to feel like generative AI search advancements have thrown a wrench into your strategy, don't panic. Your job as a content marketer remains similar, with just a bit more focus on quality, authority, and relevance.

Create in-depth, relevant content

Develop content that thoroughly covers topics with clear, well-structured information. Use headings, subheadings, and bullet points to improve readability and AI understanding. If Google's AI can't easily digest your content, then it will assume that your target readers won't either, and you won't get much organic traffic.

Focus on user intent and queries

You're going to need to do a bit more research to understand the questions your target audience is asking and why. Create content that provides clear, concise answers to these queries.

Optimize for featured snippets and AI Overviews

Structure content by using FAQ, question-and-answer formats, lists, and summary paragraphs. This increases the chances of your content being highlighted in an AI Overview.

Improve content quality

Invest in high-quality writing, editing, and fact-checking. Your content should be reliable, authoritative, and up-to-date. This is another area where Rellify excels. In the Rellify platform, you can research, plan, create, and monitor your content, and have quantifiable measures of how well your content addresses a topic and incorporates relevant keywords.

Use schema markup

Implement schema markup to help Google understand your content better. Also known as structured data, this is a form of micro-data that you can add to your website's HTML to improve the way search engines read and represent your page in search engine result pages (SERPs). It's a standardized format for providing information about a page and classifying the page content. This can improve your chances of being featured in AI summaries.

Leverage multimedia content

Incorporate images, videos, infographics, and other visual elements to enhance engagement and make your content more appealing to both users and AI.

Publish original research and insights

Create unique, original content such as research studies, surveys, and case studies. This type of content is highly valuable and more likely to be referenced by AI. If you're using AI to build or enhance your content, be careful and make sure it's personalized in some way. If Google recognizes it as re-purposed or word-for-word duplicated from a generative model, it may penalize you.

Build and maintain authority

Focus on building your site’s authority through high-quality backlinks, diversified content (across your niche) and strategic partnerships. Authoritative sites are more likely to be featured in AI overviews. Rellify pays special attention to authority when it comes to content marketing. If you're the expert in your field, your website and content should reflect that in every way.

Monitor performance and adapt

Use analytics tools to monitor how AI overviews affect your traffic and engagement. Adjust your content strategy based on what works best. You also can learn by studying the web pages that are sources for AI Overviews.

Engage your audience directly

Don't put all of your eggs in one basket! Use email marketing, social media, and other channels to drive traffic and build relationships with your audience, reducing reliance on search engine visibility alone.

Rellify knows how to keep your content on page one

Google's search evolution has been an exciting road, but it's not one that's easy to navigate. At Rellify, we're experts on content creation processes that ensure search engine optimization, no matter what new features Google rolls out. With a custom Relliverse™, your own content expert AI will find topics and keywords to grab both search engines and your target audience. You'll see boosts in your organic web traffic with much less effort than traditional SEO efforts. For a brief demo and quote, contact a Rellify expert today.

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